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Wednesday, 21 January 2009

This year has been designated International Year of Astronomy by UNESCO and IAU prompted by the 400th anniversary of Galileo's detection of the moon's of Jupiter with his telescope. Since then, great strides have been made in establishing the proportions and locations of the Earth, Sun, planets and stars; but day by day it is getting harder and harder to see these objects for ourselves. Light pollution is preventing any town or city dweller from relishing the dark night sky, and with this change, the young generation is growing up not having had the chance to experience for themselves the sheer numbers of pricks of light in the sky, and so begin to wonder what it all is, how big it is, and how it got there. Without wondering, curiosity does not follow – first the question, then the investigation.

The night sky is not the only area which is losing the capacity to inspire the naturally questioning mind of the young child. Lack of time and fear of strangers is keeping children inside, or in groups, and not able to see for themselves the way flowers grow, the way insects behave and examine other natural phenomena found in any garden – and then stop and think about it. Or they are being taught what to look at on scheduled expeditions, instead of discovering questions for themselves from their own observations. We do not seem in danger of losing new mavericks to challenge the conventional wisdom, but there is a real chance that such people will become more and more remote from “ordinary people” who will not have the context and experiences to connect with them.

We are making an artificial environment which will isolate us even further from the real world, its physics and chemistry. Driving everywhere is even lessening the effect of the weather on our own development. We are in danger of considering nature only as something to be controlled and modified, and not something we are part of and should be worked with.

When was the last time you saw the Milky Way and stopped to think about it? If the International Year of Astronomy leads more people to do that, then maybe they will begin to realise the ecological trade-offs we must make to survive on this pale blue dot

One of the many strange accusations directed against atheists is that we wish to undermine morality. This seems absurd to most humanists since we are, mostly, rather ordinary and conventional. We may not obey the local religious food laws or attend Sunday/Saturday/Friday worship but we’re rather less likely than the religious to lie, steal or assault our neighbours.

So why do they say these things?

Let’s start by asking why people practice a religion. For most believers it’s because that’s how they were raised (a point I heard made by the then Archbishop of Canterbury in 1968!). It’s not because they sought the truth and found that this religion, rather than all the others, expressed it. They also enjoy the rituals (prayers, meditation, hymns, dances) in which they’ve been raised and the fellowship of the believing community.

But it’s hard to see why enjoyment of singing or prayer should lead to the sheer energy, and sometimes hatred, with which religions inspire their followers. The religious often say that their faith gives meaning to their lives and this, I believe, is the key.

There are two kinds of meaning, existential and moral (though they are related).

Religions offer answers to existential questions like: Why are we here? What's the purpose of life? Philosophically these may be category errors but they are, for some people, emotionally powerful. People do not only, or even largely, ask these questions out of curiosity but rather because they find life frightening and want reassurance that are reasons behind the arbitrariness of ordinary life. They are likely to feel most in need of answers when life is most frightening and arbitrary.

Religions also offer answers to moral questions notably: Why should I be good? Most people know that courage, kindness and loyalty, at least to their clan, tribe or nation, are good and that lying, theft and murder are bad. But bad things are sometimes convenient and profitable. Most of us are tempted, and we fear that others may succumb to temptation. It would be reassuring to know that, even if wickedness is rewarded on Earth it will be punished in a future life.

Most religions (including Christianity, Islam, and some forms of Hinduism and Buddhism) therefore promise a future life that is either spiritual (in heaven or hell) or earthly (following reincarnation). This future life provides a basis for divine rewards and punishments.

I believe that religious claims that atheism promotes immorality arise because the religious feel that they would behave wickedly if they did not have the moral meaning provided by their religions. (In fact I think they’re mistaken. In this I think better of them than they seem to think of themselves.) They therefore believe that undermining their ideas of moral meaning, which we do do, must necessarily make people immoral. Their desire – which we generally share – that people should behave morally drives their hostility to atheism.

Of course, there are issues on which Humanist morality really is different from that of the religious. There are various issues, notably about sex, death and personal freedom, on which we generally take positions to which they object. Doubtless this contributes to their feelings. But these aren’t usually the focus of their claims.

It’s likely that the religious anger against atheists has more than one source, but the issue of moral meaning must be a main one.

Tuesday, 20 January 2009

What have the world’s greatest golfer, champion racing driver and liberal hope for the US presidency got in common?Well one thing is that they are all mixed race. All are products of miscegenation.

What a word. Who would care?

But it’s not long since many people, not just those of us of mixed race or having partners of other races, cared deeply. Miscegenation was illegal in Nazi Germany, in 16 of the states of the USA until 1967, and in South Africa until 1985. And in many other countries, including the UK, it was legal but widely disapproved of.

Most of the anti-miscegenation laws were based on the view that there was distinct white race and that it was better than other races. Scientifically speaking the first point is more than doubtful; there is more genetic variation within each so-called race than between races. The second point is equally hard to defend. It was, after all, members of the white race who invented concentration camps, atomic bombs and fascism.

Orthodox religion has, unsurprisingly, also been hostile to miscegenation. From the Dutch Reformed Church (known to English-speaking South Africans as the MuchDeformedChurch) to American fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell. As recently as 2000 the BobJonesUniversity – a Southern fundamentalist outfit – was unrepentantly hostile to inter-racial dating. Students who offended could be expelled. (BJU is, of course, the source of the Reverend Ian Paisley’s doctorate.)

These backward attitudes were not unique to the churches – indeed they were widely held by many westerners throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. But they survived longest in these religious ghettos.

So let’s recognise the success of these, and other, products of miscegenation. Long may they prosper!And let’s hope we’ve seen the last of the prejudice that would have prevented their births.

Recently New Scientist carried a series of articles called “7 reasons why people hate reason” (26 July 2008). The one by the Archbishop of Canterbury was called “Reason stands against values and morals”. What a cheek!

In his article Rowan Williams criticised the enlightenment by saying:

“Revolutionary America and France lost no sleep over slavery. Humanity had to wait for [a] more traditional … vision of what human beings were in the eyes of God and in the frame of the cosmos, to see the slaves finally emancipated.”

Indeed, their tolerance of slavery does the revolutionaries no credit (though it’s a fault they shared with most of their contemporaries).

But it is the most extraordinary cheek for Williams to criticize the enlightenment for failing to abolish slavery in its first century when Christianity’s own failure to do so lasted 18 times as long!

Williams signally fails to explain why European Christians began to oppose slavery in the 18th century after so many centuries of tolerating or even applauding it. The historical record shows that abolitionist campaigning, following a change of sentiment amongst Christians, played a major part. It can hardly be coincidental that this change followed the enlightenment and that some leading abolitionists were liberals in matters of theology. Consider, for instance, the Reverend Elhanan Winchester, an American abolitionist who moved from the USA to the UK, from Baptist Christianity to Universalism, and who helped to found South Place Ethical Society. South Place later became one of the first UK humanist organizations.

In fact reason supports morality. It is democratic and undermines traditional beliefs about the inferiority of foreigners, women and ethnic and sexual minorities. Thus it expands the circle of people to whom moral consideration is due. It causes us to question and makes us cautious about our beliefs. Thus it protects us against absurdities and, as Voltaire warned us, many atrocities have been committed in the name of absurd beliefs.

Reason alone can never motivate moral commitments which derive from our social existence. But it’s an invaluable tool and guide to moral thinking. Though he may not mean to Rowan Williams’ article encourages irrationality and immorality alike.

Humanists4Science

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About Humanists4Science (Hum4Sci)

Humanists4Science (H4S) Mission "To promote, within the humanist community, the application of the scientific method to issues of concern to broader society."

H4S Vision "A world in which important decisions are made by applying the scientific method to evidence rather than according to superstition."

H4S isfor humanists with an active interest in science.We believe that science is a fundamental part of humanism but also that it should be directed to humane and ethical ends. Science is, in our view, more a method than a body of facts.

H4S take a naturalistic view and believe, like 62% of the UK population, that science, the scientific method & other evidence provides the best way to understand the universe.

Since 2008 H4S members have discussed many Humanist-Science topics in our Yahoo Group.

Jim Al-Khalili (BHA President)

Prof. Jim Al-Khalili - 11TH BHA President - On Scientific Method

'I have a rational unshakeable conviction that our universe is understandable, that mysteries are only mysteries because we have yet to figure out, the almost always logical answers. For me there is simply no room, no need, for a supernatural divine being to fill in the gaps in our understanding. We’ll get there, we’ll fill in those gaps with objective scientific truths: [with] answers that aren't subjective, because of cultural or historical whims or personal biases, but because of empirically testable and reproducible truths. We may not get the full picture, we may never get the full picture, but science allows us to get ever closer.’ Jim Al-Khalili, BHA AGM 2013

"A lot of people say science is just one way of looking at the world, at reality, and poets and musicians and, of course, people of faith, have said there are other ways. I don't buy that. For me there is an objective reality that is there and real. For a theoretical physicist who's trained in thinking about quantum mechanics, which involves the idea that by observing something you alter its nature, you have to have some sort of working definitions of reality"Jim Al-Khalili in New Humanist magazine Mar Apr 2013

Lord Taverne

Dick Taverne

Lord Taverne

Science depends on reason and regard for evidence. For me, the scientific approach lies at the heart of humanism as well as atheism. We all accept that science has made us healthier and wealthier. What has been seldom acknowledged or realised is that since the Enlightenment, which it helped to bring about, science has played an essential part in making us more civilised.

Science is the enemy of autocracy because it replaces claims to truth based on authority with those based on evidence and because it depends on the criticism of established ideas. Scientific knowledge is the enemy of dogma and ideologies and makes us more tolerant because it is tentative and provisional and does not deal in certainties. It is the most effective way of learning about the physical world and therefore erodes superstition, ignorance and prejudice, which have been causes of the denial of human rights throughout history. Science is also the enemy of narrow nationalism and tribalism and, like the arts, is one of the activities in this world that is not motivated by greed.

What can compare, for example, with the recent achievement of the Large Hadron Collider, a venture of collaboration by 10,000 scientists and engineers from 113 countries, free from bureaucratic and political interference? Those people put aside all national, political, religious and cultural differences in pursuit of truth and for the one purpose of exploring and understanding the natural world.

Without the contribution of science, which is, in my view, the rock on which atheism and humanism are built, we would be less inclined to be critical, tolerant and understanding and more prone to prejudice, bigotry and tribalism. We would be a less civilised society.

David Papineau on Materialism

'Our world is a fully material world. We don’t need to go outside Physics to understand the constitution of the Universe. Anything non-material would be epiphenomena and could never have any effect on the material world.' David Papineau (video) on Materialism

Richard Dawkins (BHA Vice-President) on Scientific Method

'Scientific method is a system whereby working assumptions may be falsified by recourse to reason and evidence.' (Photo: Chris Street, 2006)

Peter Atkins (BHA Distinguished Supporter) on Scientific Method

'The scientific method is the only reliable method of achieving knowledge. It displaces ignorance without destroying wonder.'

'Science can deal with all the serious questions that have troubled mankind for millennia' Peter Atkins

'My own faith, my scientific faith, is that there is nothing that the scientific method cannot illuminate and elucidate." Peter Atkins

Stephen Fry (BHA Distinguished Supporter) on Scientific Method

'Reason is almost akin to superstition, ... reason must be tested, testing is the very basis of science.'

Matt Ridley (BHA Distinguished Supporter) on Scientific Method

'Science is not a catalogue of facts, but a search for new mysteries. Science increases the store of wonder and mystery in the world; it does not erode it.'

Stephen Law (BHA Distinguished Supporter) on Scientific Method

'Empirical science is possibly the only tool ... for understanding the world around us'.

Lewis Wolpert (BHA Vice President) on Scientific Method

'Science is the best way to understand the world, for any set of observations, there is only one correct explanation. Science is value-free, as it explains the world as it is. Ethical issues arise only when science is applied to technology – from medicine to industry.'

Harry Kroto (BHA Distinguished Supporter) on Scientific Method

'The methods of science are manifestly effective, having made massive humanitarian contributions to society. It is this very effectiveness which the purveyors of mystical philosophies attack, because they recognise in it the chief threat to the belief-based source of their power and financial reward.'